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STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 749 Full transcript of an interview with JEFF MINCHAM on 20 September 2005 by Peter Donovan for the EMINENT AUSTRALIANS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Recording available on CD Access for research: Unrestricted Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library OH 749 JEFF MINCHAM NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT This transcript was created by the J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection of the State Library. It conforms to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription which are explained below. Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge. It is the Somerville Collection's policy to produce a transcript that is, so far as possible, a verbatim transcript that preserves the interviewee's manner of speaking and the conversational style of the interview. Certain conventions of transcription have been applied (ie. the omission of meaningless noises, false starts and a percentage of the interviewee's crutch words). Where the interviewee has had the opportunity to read the transcript, their suggested alterations have been incorporated in the text (see below). On the whole, the document can be regarded as a raw transcript. Abbreviations: The interviewee’s alterations may be identified by their initials in insertions in the transcript. Punctuation: Square bracket [ ] indicate material in the transcript that does not occur on the original tape recording. This is usually words, phrases or sentences which the interviewee has inserted to clarify or correct meaning. These are not necessarily differentiated from insertions the interviewer or by Somerville Collection staff which are either minor (a linking word for clarification) or clearly editorial. Relatively insignificant word substitutions or additions by the interviewee as well as minor deletions of words or phrases are often not indicated in the interest of readability. Extensive additional material supplied by the interviewee is usually placed in footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page rather than in square brackets within the text. A series of dots, .... .... .... .... indicates an untranscribable word or phrase. Sentences that were left unfinished in the normal manner of conversation are shown ending in three dashes, - - -. Spelling: Wherever possible the spelling of proper names and unusual terms has been verified. A parenthesised question mark (?) indicates a word that it has not been possible to verify to date. Typeface: The interviewer's questions are shown in bold print. Discrepancies between transcript and tape: This proofread transcript represents the authoritative version of this oral history interview. Researchers using the original tape recording of this interview are cautioned to check this transcript for corrections, additions or deletions which have been made by the interviewer or the interviewee but which will not occur on the tape. See the Punctuation section above.) Minor discrepancies of grammar and sentence structure made in the interest of readability can be ignored but significant changes such as deletion of information or correction of fact should be, respectively, duplicated or acknowledged when the tape recorded version of this interview is used for broadcast or any other form of audio publication. 2 J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 749 Interview with Jeff Mincham conducted by Peter Donovan on 20th September 2005, for the Eminent Australians Oral History Project of the National Library and the State Library of South Australia. DISK 1 Okay, this is tape 1 of an interview with Jeff Mincham. Jeff has followed a distinguished career as a potter and in the ceramics field, and he’s currently still very much alive, working in that field. Jeff will be speaking to me, Peter Donovan, for the Eminent Australians Oral History Project conducted by the National Library of Australia and the State Library of South Australia. So on behalf of the Director General of the National Library and the Director of the State Library of South Australia, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to participate in this program, Jeff. Jeff, do you understand that copyright is shared by you and the libraries? Yes, I do, Peter. This being so, may we have your permission to make a transcript of this recording should the libraries decide to make one? You may. We hope you’ll speak as frankly as possible, knowing that neither the tapes nor the transcripts produced from them will be released without your authority. This interview is taking place today, Tuesday, 20th September, at Jeff Mincham’s home at Cherryville. Now, Jeff, can we begin at the beginning: where you were born, when you were born and where you grew up? Well, I was born in 1950 in Strathalbyn. My parents had a farm at nearby Milang and I was born in Strathalbyn, brought up in Milang and had my early childhood experiences in and around that area. I went to high school in Strathalbyn and eventually to Prince Alfred College, and had my primary school years in the Milang Primary School. Now, we’ve skipped over that pretty quickly. Where do you fit in the family? Are you an only child, number of siblings, where do you fit? 3 Eldest child of two, I have a brother two and a half years younger than me, and he lives in Victoria these days but until recently lived here in South Australia too. And what did your parents do? My mother and father were farming people. My father had grown up on a property at Echunga in the Adelaide Hills and moved to Milang in 1946 and I was born in 1950. It was initially a mixed farm; it became focused more and more on dairying. So I grew up in the bosom of a dairy farm, I suppose. Did your mother work on the farm? Yes, in the way of the farming life and in the way of that particular sort of farming everybody in the family makes a contribution at some stage. But it was a busy, active farm and everybody took an active role in making it function and financially survive. Who do you take after, your mother or your father? (laughs) Well, that’s interesting. The camp is divided on that opinion. I think I actually come to the conclusion that I probably do take mostly after my grandmother on my father’s side. I’ve noticed in the family histories and so forth that her nature and mine do seem to be somewhat similar. But my mother came from pretty solid Cornish stock and the Mincham side of the family are equally phlegmatic and Protestant (laughs) and so those two influences sort of are shared fairly equally in my nature, I think. Well, you’re now an artist: was there any art in the family home? Was there music there, was there art, was there literature, reading? No, there wasn’t. There was very little contact with that sort of thing. There were very few – you know, there were plaster ducks on the wall, not pictures. Other members of the Mincham family had some arts connection but I didn’t really come in contact with them until I was in my teenage years. The art, music, literature, it was pretty much in absence; it simply in a 1950s household in a farming community in South Australia was pretty much non-existent. And it came as an exhilarating surprise to me as it began to unfold in my teenage years. So presumably not much encouraging of this talent, recognition of it at primary school? 4 I did a few things. Occasionally my sort of ‘artistic’ nature would surface in a surprising way, and I was lucky in that I struck individuals along the way that encouraged it. In order for a boy, a teenager and a young man to survive in that kind of community you participate in, you embrace the mores of, that kind of lifestyle and community; and anyone that got very involved in the arts made themselves into an outsider. Now, I certainly had an interest in it, I showed a bit of a flair for theatre in my high school years, I struggled in the early secondary education and people began to notice that there was this sort of artistic ‘flair’, as it was referred to. I somewhat suppressed it, I suppose, in terms of it causing me problems in being able to stand up to the measuring stick of young manhood and youth that was very much apparent: you know, you had to kick a football and you had to run fast and you had to do hair- raising things. (laughs) And in a strange way the artistic side of my nature was satisfied by my early engagement with the study of natural history – ornithology, entomology and the local natural history – and this, in a somewhat curiously displaced way, gave me a great deal of personal satisfaction. That was eventually, I think, going to reinforce my activities as an artist, because it taught me to look at the world very closely, it taught me the powers of observation, it made you understand the forces of nature and the way things worked and were connected, and I was very carried away with that. I was much more interested in that than I was in anything that was going on at school.

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